Inside Boxing: Show honors longtime trainer Libby Medeiros

There's an amateur boxing show at White's restaurant in Westport Friday night, which takes on added significance in that it will honor long-time trainer Libby Medeiros of Fall River.

BOB HANNA

There's an amateur boxing show at White's restaurant in Westport Friday night, which takes on added significance in that it will honor long-time trainer Libby Medeiros of Fall River.

"Tribute to Libby, a Night of Boxing," which was organized by Mike Herron, the former Durfee High basketball star and older brother of former Boston Celtic Chris Herron, will take place in the grand ballroom at White's. The first of 14 scheduled amateur bouts will start at 8 p.m.

Medeiros is being honored for his 44 years as boxing coach for the Fall River Police Athletic Association (PAL). He joined the PAL program in 1962 and started coaching boxing in 1968.

"I'm the oldest, active, living member," said Medeiros with a chuckle. "Time flies, doesn't it."

Outside of Fall River and the amateur ranks, Medeiros is probably better known as the former trainer of local professional fighters Sucra Ray Oliveira, Scott Pemberton and Jason Pires, all of whom were world ranked fighters.

But it was his work with kids in the PAL program that he is most proud. Among the hundreds of kids he coached were Fall River legend Jerry LaFlamme and New Bedford standout Joey Devoll.

While Medeiros had nothing to do with the tribute, he helped Herron put together the fight card, which will include New Bedford boxers from Oliveira's On Point team and the Heart Gym in New Bedford. Also appearing on the card will be fighters from Boston, Worcester and the Cape Cod area.

Tickets are available for $10 online at Hurricaneradio on Facebook or at the PAL gym on Franklin Street in Fall River in the evening (508-672-9197). Tickets will also be sold at the door Friday night, but will be $20 at that time.

With a new coaching staff, a new executive director and eight new fighters, things were looking up for the U.S. Olympic boxing team, especially after it won its first four fights.

And then the other shoe dropped — with a resounding thud.

The U.S. boxers lost their next nine fights, though one was reversed due to incompetent refereeing (the ref was fired). Welterweight Errol Spence of Texas was the fighter given new life, but he couldn't take advantage as he lost his next fight in the quarterfinal round to Russsian Andrey Zamkovy, thus completing the Americans' ignominious exit without a medal. And we thought the 2008 team (one bronze medal) was bad. The U.S hasn't won a gold since Andre Ward did it in 2004.

The only consolation was the women's team, which took home two medals. Seventeen-year-old Claressa Shields won the gold in the middleweight division (75 kg) and Marlen Esparza captured the bronze in the flyweight (51 kg) class.

Yeah, the Olympic scoring system is ridiculous and the refereeing and judging left a lot to be desired, but that is something all the participating nations had to put up with.

The bottom line is that the whole U.S. amateur program, from top to bottom, was — in the words of ESPN and Olympic columnist Dan Raphael — "an unmitigated disaster."

If you're looking for reasons for what went wrong with a program that used to dominate the Olympics, you won't find any here. Maybe the powers that be should ask guys like Sugar Ray Leonard, Pernell "Sweet Pea" Whitaker, Mark Breland, Oscar De La Hoya, guys who have been there and know what it takes.

And if it was up to me to appoint a committee to investigate what ails our amateur program, I would want ESPN and Olympic analyst Teddy Atlas on that board, someone whose passion for the sport equals his knowledge.

What we don't need is politicians.

If you like slugfests, you won't want to miss the Sept. 8 HBO card.

The main event features two top 10 pound-for-pounds fighters in WBC/WBA super middleweight champion Andre Ward and former light heavyweight champion "Bad' Chad Dawson, which could be a great fight, or it could turn into one of those cautious tactical affairs.

The co-featured event, however, looks like an all-out war between two aggressive KO artists — WBC lightweight champion Antonio DeMarco (27-2-1, 20 KOs) and John Molina (24-1, 19 KOs). Both these guys come straight forward and throw punches in bunches. Should be fun while it lasts.

Lamont Peterson has been cleared by the IBF of the drug charges lodged against him and has been reinstated as junior welterweight champion.

The IBF confirmed Peterson's contention that the "testosteron levels noted in the VADA report are consistent with the theraputic use of the hormone and not for purpose of performance enhancement."

Negotiations are now under way for Peterson to defend the title against IBF mandatory challenger Zab Judah.

A FightNews.com source reports that Chavez Jr. missed four days of training last week because "he didn't feel like coming in." When he finally showed up on Thursday night he worked "late into the night" with trainer Freddie Roach.

Bob Hanna covers boxing for The Standard-Times. Contact him at sports@s-t.com

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